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UNLUCKY CHARMS

Johnston’s gentle but bland heroine, now making her third appearance, and her lack of subtlety in handling the theme of luck...

A murder in a town obsessed with luck leaves residents unsure what they can do to protect themselves while the prime suspect tries to clear her name.

As she concludes her public talk in Destiny, California, about animals and superstitions, Rory Chasen’s excited to share her newest products with her neighbors in her adopted home. The manager at the Lucky Dog Boutique, a store that specializes in the luckiest of accessories and food (yes, lucky food) for pets, Rory’s come up with a line of pet toys infused with luck, like a stuffed rabbit with an oversized foot. Though it may be corny, the town’s residents and visitors have all come to Destiny to share in the luck, and every interaction is sanctified by knocking on wood or crossing fingers. Rory (Knock on Wood, 2015, etc.) feels pretty lucky herself. Having come to Destiny to investigate the death of her fiance, she’s thinking of staying indefinitely, even shopping for an apartment or house to share with her best friend, Gemma, an even more recent transplant. Learning of their plans, pushy real estate agent Flora Curtival forces her services on Rory and Gemma even though the two aren’t sure they’re ready to commit. Nor is Rory the only person Flora is antagonizing. Rumors link her to a series of break-ins evidently intent on bringing storekeepers bad luck. Rory hears about the rumors from her boyfriend, policeman Justin Halbertson, though she’s also informed that it’s bad luck to talk about the crimes. Guilty or innocent, Flora is soon found murdered with one of Rory’s lucky rabbit’s feet stuffed in her mouth. Now Rory will need all the luck she can find to maintain her innocence.

Johnston’s gentle but bland heroine, now making her third appearance, and her lack of subtlety in handling the theme of luck will either amuse or repel readers.

Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-7387-4555-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Midnight Ink/Llewellyn

Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

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REMEMBER WHEN

A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does...

Written under her real name and her pseudonym, two books in one from megaselling Roberts/Robb.

Book one: Laine Tavish, gorgeous redhead and owner of a small-town antique store, isn’t about to tell the cops that she knew the old man who was hit by a car right outside her shop. Just before he took his dying breath, she recognized Willy Young, partner in crime to Big Jack O’Hara, her father. Their biggest heist: millions of dollars in hot diamonds. Her father went to prison, but not Willy, whose last words were “left it for you.” What did he leave—and where? Enter Max Gannon, insurance investigator and all-around stud, with thick, wavy, run-your-fingers-through-it hair, tawny eyes that remind Laine of a tiger, and a delicious Georgia drawl. He beds Laine pronto, and they solve the case. But some of the diamonds are still missing. . . . Book two: it’s 50 years later, and New York traffic is slower than ever: just try getting a helicab on a rainy day. But Samantha Gannon, author of a bestseller called Hot Rocks based on her grandparents’ experiences in the long-ago case, eventually makes it home from the airport to find her house-sitter Andrea dead, throat cut. Another investigation begins, spearheaded by Eve Dallas, a tough-talking but very appealing New York cop married to Roarke, a rich, eccentric genius who just barely manages to stay on the right side of the law. Is the murderer after the rest of the diamonds? And is he or she related to the master thief who betrayed Samantha’s great-grandfather? There are more burning questions, and Eve wants answers—but, first, get Central on the telelink and program the Autochef for pastrami on rye.

A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does Suspense Lite better than Nora.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-399-15106-0

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003

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